Tag Archives: Gilad Shalit

Israeli society is currently dealing with the painful, emotional issue of the Israeli government’s willingness to release Palestinian murderers, “security prisoners,” from Israeli jails, part of the price demanded by the Palestinians for consenting to sit at a negotiating table with Israel.

When Gilad Shalit was released in 2011 after more than five years in a Hamas cellar, the prisoner exchange deal was universally accepted as the right thing to do. The entire country knew we would have to pay an outrageous price, but it was for the life and freedom of a young soldier who had been sent to defend his country. But “outrageous” did not mean too high, and Israel was willing to do anything to get him back safely and restore him to his family. The prisoner exchange deal also showed all IDF soldiers that the State of Israel would never abandon them. It made everyone feel that they would be proud to serve in such an army, and people spoke about nothing else for weeks.

Israel is not America. In America, most well-educated young people begin their adult lives after college, and the U.S. Army is a professional, volunteer army. In Israel, however, military service is compulsory and universal. University studies come after army service, and even decades later, the old school tie is never where you went to school but always what you did in the army. Your unit or corps immediately identifies your ability, motivation and love of country, and is source of immense pride for parents.

In April 1987, when Adi Moses was eight years old, a Palestinian terrorist threw a Molotov cocktail into the family car as it was passing through a West Bank village. The car caught fire and Adi’s pregnant mother and brother were killed; she bears the scars, both physical and emotional, to this day. Nevertheless, when it was a question of freeing Gilad Shalit, she said that painful as it was to release terrorists, she could accept it, as could the entire State of Israel.

Today, as Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are resumed, Adi is worried that, to convince the reluctant, intransigent Palestinians to sit across the negotiating table from Israel and engage in nine months of dialogue (after which there will probably be another intifada), the price will be the release of the Israel Arab who deliberately burned her mother and brother to death. Interviewed on television, she said she could not imagine a universe in which the cold-blooded murderer who destroyed her life and her family would get up in the morning, drink coffee and read the paper. Should that happen, she said, there would be no reason for her to go on living.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what every cold-blooded terrorist operative killer does in an Israeli jail. He gets up in the morning, meets his friends, eats breakfast, drinks coffee and spends the rest of the day in their company. If particularly motivated, he can get an Open University college degree. He will also receive first-class medical and dental care, courtesy of the Israeli taxpayer. In Israel, the attitude toward “security prisoners” – Palestinian terrorists – is less rigorously defined than, for instance in the United States.

There, terrorist murderers are sent to Guantanamo and held in solitary confinement. In Israel, although classified as terrorists, they are treated as prisoners of war. Their families are allowed to visit, the Red Cross comes to see them and the Geneva Conventions are in force – all of which were denied to Gilad Shalit. The various human rights organizations work day and night to improve their conditions, the same organizations that conveniently ignore the existence and rights of the families mourning the prisoners’ victims.

Moreover, as opposed to the ordinary felons who have to deal with the prison authorities on a one-to-one basis, the security prisoners have operational autonomy. In each jail, terrorists move within their own microcosms made up of prisoners from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or even al-Qaida and Hizballah. Each group has its own spokesman. The spokesman’s role is to represent whichever organization he, and sometimes she, belongs to in dealing with the prison authorities.

In 2007, I interviewed members of the Hamas parliament after Shalit’s abduction. As I was speaking to deputy Hamas Prime Minister Abu Tir, he crooked a finger and a prisoner entered, a certified Hamas terrorist waiter, with a cup of coffee. For an instant, I forgot where I was. The prisoners’ conditions were idyllic: the radios were blasting Arabic music, the TV sets were tuned to Al-Jazeera, people were milling about, shouting at one another, I could smell food cooking, and I might as well have been a guest in the home of a Hamas leader.

Israel has finally struck back against the terrorist enclave of Gaza after having 120 rockets fired at it since Saturday and over 700 this year alone. For now, the Obama administration is rhetorically supporting Israel, but the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt is doubling down on its support for Hamas, Gaza’s ruling terrorist organization, and has withdrawn its ambassador to Israel. U.S.-based Islamists and their non-Muslim allies can be counted on in the ensuing days to pressure the administration to throw Israel under the bus in favor of the Islamist rulers of Egypt. If Egypt takes action, the administration will have to choose between its relationship with Israel or its relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. There is no middle ground to straddle.

The Israeli Defense Forces struck 100 terrorist targets, and the Iron Dome missile defense system took out 28 rockets before they landed in Israel. The campaign began with a precision strike on a car carrying Hamas military chief Ahmad Jabari, the mastermind of the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Video of the strike shows it was designed to minimize civilian casualties. The IDF tweeted, “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leader, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.” Israel is also threatening a ground operation into the Gaza Strip.

Hamas says the initial strike “opened the gates of hell” and it will fight back. With about 35,000 fighters, that’s no idle threat. Senior Hamas leaders say they are considering firing long-range rockets at Rishon LeZion, a city 7 miles from Tel Aviv. They are also contemplating carrying out suicide bombings and assassinations and are in talks with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and other Gaza-based terrorists like the Popular Resistance Committees and Palestinian Islamic Jihad about their response. The involvement of the latter is significant because its alliance with Iran remains solid. The relationship between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran has been strained because they are on opposite sides in Syria.

Egypt has withdrawn its ambassador to Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood warns that Israel will not go unchallenged like it did during Operation Cast Lead in 2009. It promises “swift Arab and international action to stop the massacres”—massacres that never happened. The Brotherhood said the situation is different now because of the Arab Spring and Egypt “will not allow the Palestinians to be subjected to Israeli aggression, as in the past.”

Egyptian President Morsi will be under increasing pressure to take action and its political benefits will be tempting. The Brotherhood’s popularity in Egypt is declining but a new poll shows that 77% of the public favor dissolving the peace treaty with Israel, up from under 25% about three years ago.

Opponents of Israel will accuse it of destroying the non-existent peace process. On the contrary, the Israeli strikes, especially the one on Jabari, are necessary for progress towards peace to happen. Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel and in September 2010, Jabari threatened to torpedo peace talks by increasing attacks. The Hamas charter even says, “The time will not come until the Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”

The political pressure on President Obama to demand a ceasefire will grow quickly. Anti-Israel forces on the left will make their voices heard. Muslim-Americans were a part of the coalition that won him re-election with over 85% voting for him, according to a survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Anti-Israel advisors to the administration, especially those with Islamist ties, will argue that the fighting is counter-productive. Already, Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, is tweeting that Israel’s military tactics don’t work and it must “elect a peacemaker like Sadat.”

The Islamist networks in the U.S. will use their massive organizational capabilities to demand U.S. pressure on Israel, and they’ll make good use of their interfaith allies.

American Muslims for Palestine, an Islamist group that meets with State Department officials, quickly condemned Israel and demanded that the U.S. cut off aid. Its statement did not even mention the hundreds of rockets fired into Israel. It accused Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of waging war for political gain ahead of his country’s January 22 election. The theme echoed the Brotherhood, which lashed out at “The Zionist war that is operating under electoral calculations for personal gain…”

The U.S.-based Islamists will undoubtedly use the American Muslims for Palestine conference on November 22-25 in Oak Brook Hills, Illinois to mobilize supporters against the Obama administration’s stance. A second blockbuster Islamist event is being held on December 21-25 in Chicago, the 11th annual Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America convention. The power of these groups, especially when they coordinate, cannot be discounted.

The situation will dramatically escalate if the Palestinian Authority asks the United Nations to recognize it as a nonmember observer state. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has written a draft proposal to recognize a provisional Palestinian state with temporary borders if it abandons this course. If it does not, a Foreign Minister position paper argues for toppling Palestinian President Abbas and dismantling the Palestinian Authority.

The Islamists in the U.S. and their anti-Israel allies are about to move full force. President Obama said in March that the U.S. will “always have Israel’s back.” To honor that commitment, he will have to stand up to the Islamist network and international community. If Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood do indeed take action, he will have to abandon his faulty hope of an accommodation with them.

We’ve been told to ignore the fiery rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood because they are a “moderate” force. We’ve been told that the administration is a stalwart friend of Israel. Those two reassurances are about to be tested.

At a time Hamas is vowing to kidnap more Israelis, some Egyptian leaders are pressuring the European Union (EU) to treat Hamas as a partner in settling the Middle East conflict.

And as Muslim Brotherhood officials use increasingly hostile rhetoric toward the Jewish state, senior American officials are reaching out to the group.

Egypt believes the recent prisoner swap freeing kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit could be a catalyst for dialogue between Hamas and the EU.

Tarek Fahmy, of the Egyptian research groups National Centre for the Study of the Middle East, told the Egyptian newspaper Al-Mesryoon that Schalit’s release gives the West an opportunity to talk with Hamas, and that it has begun to take the group seriously as an Islamic movement associated with the “Arab Spring.” Hamas wants to be regarded as a legitimate entity rather than a terror organization, he said, and this convergence of interests could be a basis for discussions with the West.

But Hamas has shown no inclination to change its violent behavior. The head of the terror group’s military wing, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, promises to kidnap more Israeli soldiers. “We will continue to abduct Israeli soldiers and officers as long as there are Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails,” said Qassem Brigades boss Ahmed Jabari.

Hamas’ military wing has “taken it upon themselves to empty Israeli jails of all prisoners regardless of their political positions or their ideology,” Jabari said.

Jabari called the day that Israel freed 477 prisoners in exchange for Schalit, including persons responsible for murders like this, this, and this, the happiest day of his life. Following their release, Hamas brought many of the freed terrorists to a luxury hotel.

Muslim Brotherhood leaders also view the release as “a milestone in the history of the Palestinian cause” and said the prisoner swap “confirmed the success of the ‘resistance option’ (terrorism).”

In a message posted on the Brotherhood’s website, Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie said the Hamas prisoners would not have been freed without the Schalit kidnapping. “The deal also proved that Israel only understands the language of force and resistance,” he said. “This language is able, with God’s permission, to liberate the Palestinian people suffering under the captivity of the Zionists.”

Anti-Semitism and advocacy of terrorism, including suicide attacks, have been recurring themes of Muslim Brotherhood leaders. In an Aug. 23 interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Essam el-Erian, another Brotherhood leader in Egypt, said Israel had no right to exist as a Jewish state:

“Existence of a state for Jews is against all rules of states all over the world.”

In a July interview with journalist Michael Totten, Erian called Hamas “a resistance group fighting for freedom and the liberation of their land from occupation.” Their land “is occupied by the real terrorists (Israelis).” Suicide bombings did not constitute terrorism, he said, because Hamas is fighting “for liberty.”

In a July 9 interview with NBC News, he stated that “Israel cannot tolerate peace” because “they want to live in war. It is the history of Jewish people.”

This bigotry has not dissuaded Obama administration officials from reaching out to the Brotherhood. Press reports indicate that in early October, senior U.S. diplomats, including a member of the National Security Council and the first secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, attended a meeting in Cairo with the secretary general of the Freedom and Justice Party, formed by the Brotherhood following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

In February, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the House intelligence Committee that the Brotherhood was “largely secular” and sought “a betterment of the political order in Egypt.” The MB, he said, had “no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.”

The reality is very different. Hamas is an outgrowth of the Brotherhood and the Schalit deal is among the many ways the two groups remain in sync. There has been no sign of Hamas modifying its violent agenda, one that ultimately calls for Israel’s destruction.

In Gaza, Hamas-affiliated newspapers have given extensive coverage to support for additional kidnappings voiced by Saudi cleric Awad al-Qarni. After an Israeli family offered a $100,000 reward for the capture of the terrorist who murdered a relative, Qarni vowed to award $100,000 to any Palestinian who kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

Palestinians say that people who think Hamas would abandon its charter calling for Israel’s destruction and accept a two-state solution “are living in an illusion,” according to Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu-Toameh. “The prisoner agreement has sent the message to Palestinians that Hamas’s ‘resistance methods,’ and not peace talks, are the only way to force Israel to comply with Palestinian demands.”